You’ll have to decide for yourself; Didion doesn’t say. She’s only talking about writing.

Linda Kuehl: You have said that writing is a hostile act; I have always wanted to ask you why.

Joan Didion: It’s hostile in that you’re trying to make somebody see something the way you see it, trying to impose your idea, your picture. It’s hostile to try to wrench around someone else’s mind that way. Quite often you want to tell somebody your dream, your nightmare. Well, nobody wants to hear about someone else’s dream, good or bad; nobody wants to walk around with it. The writer is always tricking the reader into listening to the dream.

A reviewer may try to get someone to see a novel the way the reviewer sees it. But a novelist is simply telling a story. There is no antecedent which can be seen in an alternative way. The reader forms whatever picture he chooses. The author doesn’t even know what it is.

One reader may try to make another reader see the novel in a certain way. But the author is out of the picture.